Beam optics of RF ion sources in view of ITER's NBI systems

Abstract

A low beamlet divergence is crucial for the efficiency of the ITER-NBI systems, since it affects the transmission of the beam through the duct. There is a requirement of 7 mrad e-folding divergence for the ITER Heating Neutral Beam. Significantly higher divergences (10-15 mrad) have been observed in RF-source based experiments albeit at low beam energy. This could be the consequence of a broad perpendicular velocity distribution of the H-/D- particles before extraction. This paper explores this hypothesis and its implications for ITER. To estimate H-/D- perpendicular temperatures in the RF-driven BATMAN Upgrade test facility, spatially resolved measurements of the beam power density are compared with IBSimu calculations. The estimated perpendicular temperatures show a strong dependence on the source filling pressure, decreasing from approximately 4 eV at 0.3 Pa to 2 eV at 0.4 Pa. Ion-optics calculations of the ITER-HNB grid system are performed to evaluate whether the temperatures estimated in the BATMAN Upgrade test facility are tolerable in view of beam-grid interaction and beamline transmission. The beamline transmission is fairly insensitive to the perpendicular temperature, but the heat loads at the downstream grids increase with the perpendicular temperature.